Sequel Much?

Evan introduced me to one of his terms on Tuesday evening – the “Lost in Space ending.” It was in reference to Salt, which was left fairly open ended. In its defence, there was no way of wrapping up the action without taking another hour or so. Still, Evan was a little disgusted with so blatant a sequel hook.

I don’t remember much about Lost in Space except I watched it on a plane 12 years ago and it killed Matt LeBlanc’s career. Whoops. Apparently the end of it has the group jumping to a random location in their spaceship, where I’m sure they would have one of their many adventures, if the audience is kind enough to keep attending these movies (they weren’t).

The Lost in Space ending is not to merely imply a sequel. It’s to invite one so emphatically that the studio is almost required to green light one. Of course, studios are driven by money far more than writing, so they aren’t required to do anything of the sort. Sucks to be you, writers.

It got me to thinking about which films get sequels and which don’t. Most successful films, if they want, can probably squeeze a trilogy out of its material. Even moderately successful movies can get a sequel (See: Big Momma’s House).

The most prolific series is probably James Bond (in Western Cinema anyhow). I don’t know enough about Bollywood or Hong Kong to guess at what’s popular over there, but if I had to put money down, I’d bet on Godzilla. Even his enemies have franchises. Mothra, King Ghidora, Mecha-Godzilla (widely considered to be Godzilla’s greatest nemesis, although we all know that it’s really dubbing). A more recent series might be something like Once Upon a Time in China (currently at 7 movies, according to IMDB).

Western Cinema has Disney, which milks its movies to death with sequels. It’s like Nintendo that way. Mind you, it’s like Nintendo in a lot of ways. Easily identifiable mascot, a home in G-rated media (or E, for everyone) with infrequent visits to PG material … is Disney the Nintendo of Animation, or is Nintendo the Disney of video games?

Besides James Bond, western Cinema has Star Trek (at 11 movies), Star Wars (7 theatrical movies) and Harry Potter (6 movies, plans for 2 more). And a bunch of trilogies. At least, that’s what I thought - until I stopped to think about it, and came up with a bunch more.

Rocky has 6 movies. Terminator, Die Hard, Rambo, and Indiana Jones all have 4 movies. Karate kid (seriously!) has 5. Superman has 5. Batman has 6, with plans for a 7^th. Police Academy has 7. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have 4. Aliens and Predators have converged to provide 9 movies in 2 franchises.

Horror movies deserve a shout-out of their own. They almost all have Lost in Space endings, and shamelessly plug their villain into anything involving young people (particularly women) getting killed, often in gruesome ways. Friday the 13^th has 12 movies. Nightmare on Elm Street has 9. Halloween has 10. Saw has 6, and comes out with a ‘new’ one every year. ‘New’ is in quotation marks because it’s pretty much a remake each time.

I have no idea why horror movies are able to be milked more than other genres. Is it that they can pay actors less because they don’t need to act? Are the budgets less because they always shoot at night? I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t intend to find out.

The interesting thing about most of these (except for the horror ones) is that they're almost all based on pre-existing works. James Bond was from a book. Star Trek was from a TV show. Superman and Batman were comics. Harry Potter was a book.

So unless you’re a visionary like George Lucas (Star Wars), an unemployed actor that can write a movie analogous to their career like Sylvester Stallone (Rocky), or an incredible dick to work with like James Cameron (Terminator), you’re pretty much out of luck. You can get three movies out of your great concept. But for the love of all that’s great in cinema, please wrap up your storylines. Unless you want to end up like Lost in Space.